Canada Part 3

If envy deceived you, mourn for me.

My courage destroyed me. I could not hand to another the glory that I won among you.

Cease not to mourn for me.

Port Royal, in later years, arose from its ashes, and the fleur-de-lis, or the red cross, floated from its walls, according as the French or the English were the victors in the long struggle that ensued for the possession of Acadia. But before we continue the story of its varying fortunes in later times, we must proceed to the banks of the St.

Lawrence, where the French had laid the foundation of Quebec and New France in the great valley, while Poutrincourt was struggling vainly to make a new home for himself and family by the side of the river of Port Royal.

[1] Now known as Douchet Island; no relics remain of the French occupation.

[2] Champlain says the river was named after a little fish caught there, _de grandeur d'un esplan_.

{67}

VI.

SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN IN THE VALLEY OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.

(1608-1635.)

When Samuel Champlain entered the St. Lawrence River for the second time, in 1608, after his three years' explorations in Acadia, and laid the foundation of the present city of Quebec, the only Europeans on the Atlantic coast of America were a few Spaniards at St. Augustine, and a few Englishmen at Jamestown. The first attempt of the English, under the inspiration of the great Raleigh, to establish a colony in the fine country to the north of Spanish Florida, then known as Virginia, is only remembered for the mystery which must always surround the fate of Virginia Dare and the little band of colonists who were left on the island of Roanoke. Adventurous Englishmen, Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth, had even explored the coast of the present United States as far as the Kennebec before the voyages of Champlain and Poutrincourt, and the first is said to have given the name of Cape {68} Cod to the point named Malebarre by the French. It was not, however, until 1607 that Captain Newport, representing the great company of Virginia, to whom King James II. gave a charter covering the territory of an empire, brought the first permanent English colony of one hundred persons up the James River in Chesapeake Bay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Champlain.]

From this time forward France and England became rivals in America. In the first years of the seventeenth century were laid the foundations not only of the Old Dominion of Virginia, which was in later times to form so important a state among the American commonwealths, but also of the New Dominion whose history may be said to commence on the sh.o.r.es of Port Royal. But Acadia was not destined to be the great colony of France--the centre of her imperial aspirations in America. The story of the French in Acadia, from the days of De Monts and Poutrincourt, until the beginning of the eighteenth century when it became an English possession, is at most only a series of relatively unimportant episodes in the history of that scheme of conquest which was planned in the eighteenth century in the palace of Versailles and in the old castle of St. Louis on the heights of Quebec, whose interesting story I must now tell.

When Champlain returned to France in 1607 De Monts obtained from Henry the Fourth a monopoly of the Canadian fur-trade for a year, and immediately fitted out two vessels, one of which was given to Pontgrave, who had taken part in previous expeditions to the new world.

Champlain was appointed {70} by De Monts as his representative, and practically held the position of lieutenant-governor under different viceroys, with all necessary executive and judicial powers, from this time until his death, twenty-seven years later.

Champlain arrived on the 3rd of July off the promontory of Quebec, which has ever since borne the name given to it by the Algonquin tribes, in whose language _Kebec_ means such a strait or narrowing of a river as actually occurs at this part of the St. Lawrence. The French pioneers began at once to clear away the trees and dig cellars on an accessible point of land which is now the site of Champlain market in what is called "the lower town" of the modern city. Champlain has left us a sketch of the buildings he erected--_habitation_ as he calls them--and my readers will get from the ill.u.s.tration opposite an idea of the plan he followed. Champlain made one of the buildings his headquarters for twelve years, until he built a fort on the heights, which was the beginning of that famous Fort and Castle of St. Louis to which reference is so constantly made in the histories of New France.

Champlain was obliged immediately after his arrival at Quebec to punish some conspirators who had agreed to murder him and hand over the property of the post to the Basque fishermen frequenting Tadousac. The leader, Jean du Val, was hanged after a fair trial and three of his accomplices sent to France, where they expiated their crime in the galleys. Great explorers had in those days to run such risks among their followers and crews, not affected {71} by their own enthusiasm.

Only three years later a famous sailor and discoverer of new seas and lands, was left to die among the waste of waters which ever since have recalled the name of Henry Hudson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Habitation de Quebec, from Champlain's sketch. Key to ill.u.s.tration: A, Storehouse; B, Dovecote; C, Workmen's lodgings and armoury; D, Lodgings for mechanics; E, Dial; F, Blacksmith's shop and workmen's lodgings; G, Galleries; H, Champlain's residence; I, Gate and drawbridge; L, Walk; M, Moat; N, Platform for cannon; O, Garden; P, Kitchen; P, Vacant s.p.a.ce; R, St. Lawrence.]

During the summer of 1609 Champlain decided to join an expedition of the Algonquin and Huron Indians of Canada against the Iroquois, whose country lay between the Hudson and Genesee rivers and westward of a beautiful lake which he found could be reached by the river, then known as the River of {72} the Iroquois--because it was their highway to the St. Lawrence--and now called the Richelieu.

Canada was to pay most dearly in later years, as these pages will show, for the alliance Champlain made with the inveterate enemies of the ablest and bravest Indians of North America. Nowhere in his own narrative of his doings in the colony does he give us an inkling of the motives that influenced him. We may, however, fairly believe that he underrated the strength and warlike qualities of the Iroquois, and believed that the allied nations of Canada would sooner or later, with his a.s.sistance, win the victory. If he had shown any hesitation to ally himself with the Indians of Canada, he might have hazarded the fortunes, and even ruined the fur-trade which was the sole basis of the little colony's existence for many years. The dominating purpose of his life in Canada, it is necessary to remember, was the exploration of the unknown region to which the rivers and lakes of Canada led, and that could never have been attempted, had he by any cold or unsympathetic conduct alienated the Indians who guarded the waterways over which he had to pa.s.s before he could unveil the mysteries of the western wilderness.

In the month of June Champlain and several Frenchmen commenced their ascent of the Richelieu in a large boat, in company with several bark canoes filled with sixty Canadian Indians. When they reached the rapids near the lovely basin of Chambly--named after a French officer and seignior in later times--the French boat could not be taken any {73} further. It was sent back to Quebec while Champlain and two others, armed with the arquebus, a short gun with a matchlock, followed the Indians through the woods to avoid this dangerous part of the river. The party soon reached the safe waters of the Richelieu and embarked once more in their canoes. For the first time Champlain had abundant opportunities to note the customs of the Indians on a war-path, their appeals to evil spirits to help them against their enemies, their faith in dreams, and their methods of marching in a hostile country. The party pa.s.sed into the beautiful lake which has ever since that day borne the great Frenchman's name; they saw its numerous islets, the Adirondacks in the west, and the Green Mountains in the east. Paddling cautiously for some nights along the western sh.o.r.e, they reached at last on the evening of the 29th of July a point of land, identified in later days as the site of Ticonderoga, so celebrated in the military annals of America. Here they found a party of Iroquois, who received them with shouts of defiance, but retreated to the woods for the night with the understanding on both sides that the fight would take place as soon as the sun rose next morning. The allies remained in their canoes, dancing, singing, and hurling insults at their foes, who did not fail to respond with similar demonstrations.

Next morning, two hundred stalwart Iroquois warriors, led by three chiefs with conspicuous plumes, marched from their barricade of logs and were met by the Canadian Indians. Champlain immediately fired on the chiefs with such success that two of {74} them fell dead and the other was wounded and died later. "Our Indians," writes Champlain, "shouted triumphantly, and then the arrows began to fly furiously from both parties. The Iroquois were clearly amazed that two chiefs should have been so suddenly killed although they were protected from arrows by a sort of armour made of strong twigs and filled with cotton. While I was reloading, one of my men, who was not seen by the enemy, fired a shot from the woods and so frightened the Iroquois, no longer led by their chiefs, that they lost courage and fled precipitately into the forest, where we followed and succeeded in killing a number and taking ten or twelve prisoners. On our side only ten or fifteen were wounded, and they very soon recovered."

On their return to the St. Lawrence, the Indians gave Champlain an ill.u.s.tration of their cruelty towards their captives. When they had harangued the Iroquois and narrated some of the tortures that his nation had inflicted on the Canadians in previous times, he was told to sing, and when he did so, as Champlain navely says, "the song was sad to hear."

A fire was lit, and when it was very hot, the Indians seized a burning brand and applied it to the naked body of their victim, who was tied to a tree. Sometimes they poured water on his wounds, tore off his nails, and poured hot gum on his head from which they had cut the scalp. They opened his arm near the wrists, and pulled at his tendons and when they would not come off, they used their knives. The poor wretch was forced to cry out now and then in his agony, and it made Champlain {75} heart-sick to see him so maltreated, but generally he exhibited so much courage and stoicism that he seemed as if he were not suffering at all.

Champlain remonstrated with them, and was at last allowed to put a speedy end to the sufferings of the unhappy warrior. But even when he was dead, they cut the body into pieces and attempted to make the brother of the victim swallow his heart. Champlain might well say that it was better for an Indian to die on the battlefield or kill himself when wounded, than fall into the hands of such merciless enemies.

Soon after this memorable episode in the history of Canada, Champlain crossed the ocean to consult De Monts, who could not persuade the king and his minister to grant him a renewal of his charter. The merchants of the seaboard had combined to represent the injury the trade of the kingdom would sustain by continuing a monopoly of Canadian furs. De Monts, however, made the best arrangements he could under such unfavourable conditions, and Champlain returned to the St. Lawrence in the spring of 1610. During the summer he a.s.sisted the Canadian allies in a successful a.s.sault on a large body of the Iroquois who had raised a fortification at the mouth of the Richelieu, and all of whom were killed. It was on this occasion, when a large number of Canadian nations were a.s.sembled, that he commenced the useful experiment of sending Frenchmen into the Ottawa valley to learn the customs and language of the natives, and act as interpreters afterwards.

The French at Quebec heard of the a.s.sa.s.sination {76} of Henry the Fourth who had been a friend of the colony. Champlain went to France in the autumn of 1610, and returned to Canada in the following spring.

In the course of the summer he pa.s.sed some days on the island of Mont Royal where he proposed establishing a post where the allied nations could meet for purposes of trade and consultation, as he told the Ottawa Indians at a later time when he was in their country. He made a clearing on a little point to which he gave the name of Place Royale, now known as Pointe-a-Callieres, on a portion of which the hospital of the Grey Nuns was subsequently built. It was not, however, until thirty years later that the first permanent settlement was made on the island, and the foundations laid of the great city which was first named Ville-Marie.

During the next twenty-four years Champlain pa.s.sed some months in France at different times, according to the exigencies of the colony.

One of the most important changes he brought about was the formation of a new commercial a.s.sociation, for the purpose of reconciling rival mercantile interests. To give strength and dignity to the enterprise, the Count de Soissons, Charles of Bourbon, one of the royal sons of France, was placed at the head, but he died suddenly, and was replaced by Prince de Conde, Henry of Bourbon, also a royal prince, best known as the father of the victor of Rocroy, and the opponent of Marie de'

Medici during her intrigues with Spain. It was in this same year that he entered into an engagement with a rich Calvinist, Nicholas Boulle, to marry his daughter Helen, then a child, {77} when she had arrived at a suitable age, on the condition that the father would supply funds to help the French in their Canadian experiment. The marriage was not consummated until ten years later, and Champlain's wife, whose Christian name he gave to the pretty islet opposite Montreal harbour, spent four years in the settlement. The happiness of a domestic life was not possible in those early Canadian days, and a gentle French girl probably soon found herself a mere luxury amid the savagery of her surroundings. Helen Champlain has no place in this narrative, and we leave her with the remark that she was converted by her husband, and on his death retired to the seclusion of an Ursuline convent in France.

No child was born to bear the name and possibly increase the fame of Champlain.

On his return to Canada, in the spring of 1613, Champlain decided to explore the western waters of Canada. L'Escarbot, who published his "New France," soon after his return from Acadia, tells us that "Champlain promised never to cease his efforts until he has found there [in Canada] a western or northern sea opening up the route to China which so many have so far sought in vain." While at Paris, during the winter of 1612, Champlain saw a map which gave him some idea of the great sea which Hudson had discovered. At the same time he heard from a Frenchman, Nicholas de Vignau, who had come to Paris direct from the Ottawa valley, that while among the Algonquin Indians he had gone with a party to the north where they had found a salt water sea, on whose sh.o.r.es were the remains {78} of an English ship. The Indians had also, according to Vignau, brought back an English lad, whom they intended to present to Champlain when he made his promised visit to the Upper Ottawa.

Champlain probably thought he was at last to realise the dream of his life. Accompanied by Vignau, four other Frenchmen, and an Indian guide, he ascended the great river, with its numerous lakes, cataracts, and islets. He saw the beautiful fall to which ever since has been given the name of Rideau--a name also extended to the river, whose waters make the descent at this point--on account of its striking resemblance to a white curtain. Next he looked into the deep chasm of mist, foam, and raging waters, which the Indians called Asticou or Cauldron (Chaudiere), on whose sides and adjacent islets, then thickly wooded, now stand great mills where the electric light flashes amid the long steel saws as they cut into the huge pine logs which the forests of the Ottawa yearly contribute to the commerce and wealth of Canada.

At the Chaudiere the Indians evoked the spirits of the waters, and offered them gifts of tobacco if they would ward off misfortune. The expedition then pa.s.sed up the n.o.ble expansion of the river known as the Chats, and saw other lakes and cataracts that gave variety and grandeur to the scenery of the river of the Algonquins, as it was then called, and reached at last, after a difficult portage, the country around Allumette lake, where Nicholas de Vignau had pa.s.sed the previous winter. Two hundred and fifty-four years later, on an August day, a farmer unearthed on this old {79} portage route in the district of North Renfrew, an old bra.s.s astrolabe of Paris make, dated 1603; the instrument used in those distant days for taking astronomical observations and ascertaining the lat.i.tude. No doubt it had belonged to Champlain, who lost it on this very portage by way of Muskrat and Mud lakes, as from this place he ceases to give us the correct lat.i.tudes which he had previously been able to do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Champlain's lost astrolabe.]

Among the Algonquin Indians of this district, who lived in rudely-built bark cabins or camps, and were hunters as well as cultivators of the soil, he soon found out that there was not a word of truth in the story which Nicholas de Vignau had told him {80} of a journey to a northern sea, but that it was the invention of "the most impudent liar whom I have seen for a long time." Champlain did not punish him, though the Indians urged him to put him to death.

Champlain remained a few days among the Indians, making arrangements for future explorations, and studying the customs of the people. He was especially struck with their method of burial. Posts supported a tablet or slab of wood on which was a rude carving supposed to represent the features of the dead. A plume decorated the head of a chief; his weapons meant a warrior; a small bow and one arrow, a boy; a kettle, a wooden spoon, an iron pot, and a paddle, a woman or girl.

These figures were painted in red or yellow. The dead slept below, wrapped in furs and surrounded by hatchets, knives, or other treasures which they might like to have in the far-off country to which they had gone; for, as Champlain says, "they believe in the immortality of the soul."

Champlain made no attempt to proceed further up the river. Before leaving the Upper Ottawa, he made a cedar cross, showing the arms of France--a custom of the French explorers, as Cartier's narrative tells us--and fixed it on an elevation by the side of the lake. He also promised Tessouat to return in the following year and a.s.sist him against the Iroquois.

The next event of moment in the history of the colony was the arrival in 1615 of Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, and Joseph Le Caron, and {81} the lay brother Pacifique du Plessis, who belonged to the mendicant order of the Recollets, or reformed branch of the Franciscans, so named from their founder, St. Francis d'a.s.sisi. They built near the French post at Quebec a little chapel which was placed in charge of Father Jamay and Brother Du Plessis, while Jean d'Olbeau went to live among the Montagnais and Joseph Le Caron among the Hurons of the West.

During the summer of 1615 Champlain fulfilled his pledge to accompany the allied tribes on an expedition into the country of the Iroquois.

This was the most important undertaking of Champlain's life in Canada, not only on account of the length of the journey, and the knowledge he obtained of the lake region, but of the loss of prestige he must have sustained among both Iroquois and Canadian Indians who had previously thought the Frenchman invincible. The enemy were reached not by the usual route of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, considered too dangerous from their neighbourhood to the Iroquois, but by a long detour by way of the Ottawa valley, Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe, and the portages, rivers, and lakes that lead into the River Trent, which falls into the pretty bay of Quinte, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, whence they could pa.s.s rapidly into the country of the Five Nations.

Accompanied by Stephen Brule, a noted Indian interpreter, a servant, and eight Indians, Champlain left Montreal about the middle of July, ascended the Ottawa, and paddled down the Mattawa to the lake of the Nip.i.s.sings, where he had interviews with {82} the Indians who were dreaded by other tribes as sorcerers.

The canoes of the adventurous Frenchmen went down French River, and at last reached the waters of the great Fresh Water Sea, the _Mer Douce_ of Champlain's maps, and now named Lake Huron in memory of the hapless race that once made their home in that wild region. Pa.s.sing by the western sh.o.r.e of the picturesque district of Muskoka, the party landed at the foot of the bay and found themselves before long among the villages of the Hurons, whose country lay then between Nottawasaga Bay and Lake Simcoe. Here Champlain saw the triple palisades, long houses, containing several households, and other distinctive features of those Indian villages, one of which Cartier found at the foot of Mont Royal.

In the village of Carhagouaha, where the palisades were as high as thirty-five feet, Champlain met Father Le Caron, the pioneer of these intrepid missionaries who led the way to the head-waters and tributaries of the great lakes. For the first time in that western region the great Roman Catholic ceremony of the Ma.s.s was celebrated in the presence of Champlain and wondering Indian warriors. At the town of Cahiague, the Indian capital, comprising two hundred cabins, and situated within the modern township of Orillia, he was received with great rejoicings, and preparations immediately made for the expedition against the Iroquois. Stephen Brule undertook the dangerous mission of communicating with the Andastes, a friendly nation near the {83} headwaters of the Susquehanna, who had promised to bring five hundred warriors to the a.s.sistance of the Canadian allied forces.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Onondaga fort in the Iroquois country; from Champlain's sketch.]

The expedition reached the eastern end of Lake Ontario at the beginning of October by the circuitous route I have already mentioned, crossed to the other side somewhere near Sackett's harbour, and soon arrived in the neighbourhood of the Onondaga fort, which is placed by the best authorities a few miles to the south of Lake Oneida. It was on the afternoon of the 10th of October, when the woods {84} wear their brightest foliage, that the allied Indians commenced the attack with all that impetuosity and imprudence peculiar to savages on such occasions. The fort was really a village protected by four concentric rows of palisades, made up of pieces of heavy timber, thirty feet in height, and supporting an inside gallery or parapet where the defenders were relatively safe from guns and arrows. The fort was by the side of a pond from which water was conducted to gutters under the control of the besieged for the purpose of protecting the outer walls from fire.

Champlain had nine Frenchmen under his direction--eight of them having accompanied Father Le Caron to the Huron village. It was utterly impossible to give anything like method to the Indian a.s.saults on the strong works of the enemy. Champlain had a high wooden platform built, and placed on it several of his gunners who could fire into the village, but the Iroquois kept well under cover and very little harm was done. The attempts to fire the palisades were fruitless on account of the want of method shown by the attacking parties. At last the allied Indians became disheartened when they saw Champlain himself was wounded and no impression was made on the fort. They returned to the cover of the woods, and awaited for a few days the arrival of Stephen Brule and the expected reinforcements of Andastes. But when nearly a week had pa.s.sed, and the scouts brought no news of Indians from the Susquehanna, the Canadians determined to return home without making another attack on the village. And here, I may {85} mention, that Stephen Brule was not seen at Quebec until three years later. It appeared then, from his account of his wanderings, that he succeeded after some vexatious delay in bringing the Andastes to Oneida Lake only to find that they had left the country of the Iroquois, who tortured him for a while, and then, pleased with his spirit, desisted, and eventually gave him his liberty. He is reported to have reached in his wanderings the neighbourhood of Lake Superior, where he found copper, but we have no satisfactory information on this point.[1]

On their return to Canada, the Indians carried Champlain and other wounded men in baskets made of withes. They reached the Huron villages on the 20th of December after a long and wearisome journey. Champlain remained in their country for four months, making himself acquainted with their customs and the nature of the region, of which he has given a graphic description. Towards the last of April, Champlain left the Huron villages, and arrived at Quebec near the end of June, to the great delight of his little colony, who were in doubt of his ever coming back.

Another important event in the history of those days was the coming into the country of several Jesuit missionaries in 1625, when the Duke of Ventadour, a staunch friend of the order, was made viceroy of the colony in place of the Duke of Montmorency, who had purchased the rights of the Prince of Conde when he was imprisoned in the {86} Bastile for having taken up arms against the King. These Jesuit missionaries, Charles Lalemant, who was the first superior in Canada, Jean de Brebeuf, Ennemond Ma.s.se, the priest who had been in Acadia, Francois Charton, and Gilbert Buret, the two latter lay brothers, were received very coldly by the officials of Quebec, whose business interests were at that time managed by the Huguenots, William and Emeric Caen. They were, however, received by the Recollets, who had removed to a convent, Notre-Dame des Anges, which they had built by the St. Charles, of sufficient strength to resist an attack which, it is reported on sufficiently good authority, the Iroquois made in 1622.

The first Jesuit establishment was built in 1625 on the point at the meeting of the Lairet and St. Charles, where Cartier had made his little fort ninety years before.

We come now to a critical point in the fortunes of the poor and struggling colony. The ruling spirit of France, Cardinal Richelieu, at last intervened in Canadian affairs, and formed the Company of New France, generally called the company of the Hundred a.s.sociates, who received a perpetual monopoly of the fur-trade, and a control of all other commerce for sixteen years, beside dominion over an immense territory extending from Florida to the Arctic Seas, and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the great Fresh Water Sea, the extent of which was not yet known. Richelieu placed himself at the head of the enterprise.